At Fashion Week Hemlines Are Up and Down, Just Like the Markets

A model walks the runway at the Guli Collections Spring 2011 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, Lincoln Center in New York City. Designed by Gulnara Karimova, a daughter of the president of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, the collection included ethnic Uzbek fabrics and patterns applied to long, flowing dresses and skirts. Photographer: Jemal Countess/Getty Images

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- It used to be so simple at fashion
shows. When stocks were soaring, skirts rose with them to mini
length. When the markets headed down, hemlines dropped to more
modest levels.

This year, it’s not so straightforward. Three days into New
York’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, luxury retail consultant
Robert Burke was scratching his head trying to find any
correlation between the runway’s different styles and the
economy.

“Hemlines are all over the place, very much like the stock
market,” Burke, president of Robert Burke Associates in New
York, said in an interview.

In the past month, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped
from 1121.06 on Aug. 10 to 1047.22 on Aug. 26, climbing back to
1109.55 on Sept. 10 for its biggest two-week gain since June.
The 97 designers presenting Spring 2011 collections this week
feature similar ups and downs -- with everything from micro-mini
skirts to floor-swooping maxi pieces made with transparent
organza and chiffon.

“We are living in a universe where there’s no hemline
edict,” Fern Mallis, a fashion industry consultant, said in an
interview. “The old adage doesn’t apply any longer.”

Mallis was referring to a maxim known as the “hemline
index,” a 1920s theory attributed to the economist George
Taylor that suggested a correlation between hemlines and
economic growth.

This time around, BCBG Max Azria had some dresses so short
that they could have passed for tunics, and others that reached
the ankle, clinging to the models’ long-limbed bodies like fancy
nightgowns. Meanwhile, designer Prabal Gurung dropped his
hemlines below the knee and, on occasion, even below mid-calf.

Higher Hems

In the 20th century, dresses crept up for the first time
around 1915, during World War I, said Daniel James Cole, a
fashion historian. Around the same time, the U.S. economy
expanded for 44 months, starting in December 1914, according to
the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“The hem went up to mid-calf,” said Cole, a professor at
the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. “That was
radical, because the hemline of the 19th century was to the
shoe.”

The prosperous “roaring twenties” saw the emergence of
flappers, who provoked anger by bobbing their hair, smoking in
public and wearing knee-length dresses.

The stock market’s crash of 1929 was a defining moment for
the economy and skirt heights, Cole said. Both plummeted, with
hemlines below mid-calf. The S&P Index dropped 86 percent from
Sept. 6, 1929, through July 8, 1932, according to data compiled
by Bloomberg News.

Knee-Length

A decade later, on the eve of the World War II, the U.S.
economy entered an 80-month expansion which lasted through
February 1945, according to the National Bureau of Economic
Research. During this time, knee-length skirts became ubiquitous,
though the trend “had more to do with conserving fabric for the
war effort than with the economy,” Cole said.

As a reaction against wartime’s austerity and fabric
rations, Christian Dior’s first fashion collection in 1947
offered luxurious silhouettes with full skirts reaching below
mid-calf.

“The hemlines dropped by 10 inches,” said Cole. The S&P
fell 28 percent between May 29, 1946, and May 19, 1947.

During the 1960s, the U.S. economy grew for 106 months,
making it the second-longest expansion between 1857 and today,
according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Hemlines
reached their highest.

Twiggy Miniskirts

By 1966, miniskirts became a must in women’s wardrobes.
British designer Mary Quant and teenage model Twiggy helped
popularize the style.

“In 1966, you had to wear a skirt that was at the knee or
higher, or you’d look ruefully out of fashion,” Cole said.

With the S&P dropping 36 percent from Nov. 29, 1968, to May
26, 1970, hemlines moved back to modesty. On March 13, 1970,
Life magazine addressed the style transition with a cover story,
“The Great Hemline Hassle.” On Aug. 21, 1970, the publication
announced, “The Midi Muscles In.”

A clear correlation started breaking down during the 1980s,
with designers offering a greater range of styles and lengths.

“It used to be that short was in and long was out. If you
wore long, you’d be embarrassed,” Marshal Cohen, chief industry
analyst at NPD Group, Inc. in Port Washington, New York, said in
an interview. “Now you can wear long, you can wear short. You
can wear your pajamas to work and no one would care.”

Maxi Return

Yet, even now an occasional correlation can be spotted,
Cole said. Last summer, after the S&P fell 57 percent between
October 2007 and March 2009, he noticed floor-length sleeveless
dresses appearing on the streets of New York.

“There’s a whole generation of young women who’ve never
worn a maxi skirt in their lives,” he said.

For her Friday show, Nicole Miller abandoned her signature
figure-hugging dresses in favor of a flowing, layered look that
incorporated several hemlines within a single outfit.

“I was just trying to move away from the tight and
short,” said Miller, in an interview after the presentation.
“There’s no subliminal message there.”

The Guli collection designed by Gulnara Karimova, a
daughter of the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov, included
ethnic Uzbek fabrics, patterns and embellishments applied to
floor-length dresses. Toward the end of the event, a group of
models strutted out in traditional striped Uzbek robes.
Untraditionally, the robes were untied, revealing bodices -- and
no skirts at all.